Ooooh, these shoes....

Oh, my gosh, I am so in love with these stunning ballet flats from Tashkent by Cheyenne. The best part is that their square toes make them look like the actual pointe shoes that dancers wear.

I used to study ballet really seriously, and whenever we bought pointe shoes we'd have to break them in. Pointe shoes are really stiff at first, so you have to bend them, hit them against concrete and stack books on them to make them soft enough to dance in (since when you dance, your foot needs to curve very precisely in each step, so the shoes have to be fitted yet soft). We'd cut off the fabric at the toe so they wouldn't be slippery when we were turning; and we'd scrape up the bottoms to get more friction on the slick studio floors. Then we'd sew on the elastics and ribbons, and we'd be good to go.

It was intense process, but a well broken-in pair of pointe shoes is the best thing in the world. The Tashkent shoes are the next best thing.

Bonus: If you buy them through Otte, you can get a 20 percent discount through Lucky Magazine; register here for the discount code.